


Finding Limits

by whiteraven1606



Series: Loosely Connected [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Exhaustion, Food Issues, Gen, Teambuilding, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiteraven1606/pseuds/whiteraven1606
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce is buried in his new shiny lab and is reluctant to come out for anything. Steve is slowly breaking his new gym as he tries to find his body's limits. Tony is the first to worry about them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Limits

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at: http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/15292.html?thread=32446396#t32446396

****

Tony tapped his fingers on his crossed arm as he watched Bruce work through the glass wall of Bruce's lab. "JARVIS, has he eaten today?"

"Doctor Banner has had two bananas, three cups of coffee, four cups of tea, and an apple."

Tony's eyebrows shot up. "Wow. How close is his metabolism to Steve's again?"

"Sir, I believe you are asking a rhetorical question."

Tony smiled. "Yep." He turned and bounded up the stairs towards Steve's gym. Maybe he could get their leader to be the mother hen as well.

****

Steve was busy counting, so it took him a minute to catch on that Tony was talk to him. "What?"

"I said, how long have you been going at that?"

Steve leaned against the heavy bag and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. "A while and now I'll have to start over because my healing factor will catch up now that I've stopped for a minute." He frowned at Tony's expression. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. What did you need?"

Tony came closer and looked up at the mooring for the bag in the ceiling. "JARVIS, how close is that to failure?"

"Another two hours at the same level of strain induced by Captain Rogers' previous actives."

"Okay." Tony made a face at him. "I've got a concern. It has to do with the team."

Steve wiped his face on a towel and blinked at Tony. "Oh. Okay? What's the concern?" He braced himself for another fight about Hulk and how some of the team still weren't quite sure how to handle him, so it floored him when Tony didn't even mention the Hulk.

"You." He waved a hand. "Bruce too, but right now you. When did you last eat today?"

Steve wrinkled his nose. "I've been busy."

Tony cocked his head. "JARVIS?"

"He has not had food in 19 hours."

"Last night's dinner? You didn't eat this morning?" Tony rubbed at his eyes. "Wow."

"I'm fine."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure." He plopped down beside Steve as he sat down on his bench. "Look, Cap. What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Steve twisted the towel around in his hands. "Nothing. Tony, I'm just training. That's all."

"Training?" Tony stared at him closely, the same why he had with Bruce on the Hellicarrier right after he'd poked him. He pulled back and stood up. "Training."

"Yes, Tony. Now I need to get back to it." Steve ignored Tony's mutters and went back to his attempt to see how long it took to exhaust himself. He thought over Bruce's behavior as he did. Tony didn't just mention things, if he said something out of the blue it was going to turn out to be important. Steve had figured that out by now.

****

Tony went looking for help. There was no way he'd get _Steve_ to do what he wanted without some heavy duty help. "Agent. There you are."

Phil looked up from his reports. "I've been here for five hours, with a few breaks. You knew that."

"Well, I didn't need you five hours ago."

Phil put down his pen. "What is going on?"

Tony put a cup of coffee down in front of Phil and sat his own scotch down as he sat. "I've got a concern."

Phil cocked an eyebrow. "You. Concerned."

"Yes."

"Is it the end of the world?"

Tony smiled. "No, not yet."

Phil nodded. "What is it?"

"Bruce and Steve."

With a blink, Phil picked up his pen again. "I can assure you that Dr. Banner is not involved with Captain Rogers."

"What? No." Tony sighed and downed his scotch. "I know who Bruce is involved with. I'm worried about their time management."

"What?"

Tony poked the screen in the table between them and brought up a helpful chart. "I got hungry, right? So, I was going to get Bruce and find Clint and eat, but then...I watched Bruce working and it dawned on me that I'm always dragging him out. Clint brings him to bed."

"He's not had a lab in a long time, Stark."

"Yeah, but it should have tapered off, right? Once he started getting used to the idea that he's got a place here. Shouldn't he...I don't know, relax enough to eat at least?"

"He isn't eating?"

Tony pursed his lips. "Not enough. Neither is Steve."

Phil flicked the chart to show how much the two had eaten in the last two weeks. There were days of gaps for Steve and a steady low level for Bruce. Phil looked back up at Tony. "Go get Bruce. I'll send Natasha in for Steve. We're having a team dinner."

"Awesome." Tony zipped out of the room as Phil frowned after him.

****

Bruce waved away the noise. "Not right now. I've almost got this."

"Aren't you hungry?"

Bruce frowned. He hadn't been until Tony had said the word. "I'm fine."

Tony looked over his work. "You can stop for an hour, no problem. We'll have JARVIS monitor it and you can come eat." Tony cocked his head. "Team dinner."

Bruce tried not to let his reluctance show. "That's great."

Tony rolled his eyes. "You won't get comfortable with them if you don't start interacting."

"I interact."

"Sliding out of a room two minutes after Natasha enters isn't interacting. It's running away."

"I don't..." Bruce sighed. "I still scare her."

"She's no where near as scared now. You know that."

Bruce blinked because he hadn't known that. "Why a team dinner?"

"It's a coverup for an effort to make you and Steve take breaks."

"Sure, right." Bruce put everything into pause and glanced up at the ceiling. "Are you sure JARVIS doesn't mind?"

Tony shrugged. "He'd say if he did."

"Your AI worries me sometimes."

With a grin, Tony hooked his arm into Bruce's elbow. "Why don't you believe me when I say this is an effort to make you and Steve take breaks?"

Bruce watched his lab until they turned the far corner and he couldn't see it anymore. He scoffed. "Like Steve would neglect himself."

Tony didn't say anything to that.

****

Clint watched Tony try to keep Bruce engaged as Nat worked on make Steve uncomfortable enough he couldn't get up the courage to try to excuse himself. Thor was giving them all looks, so Clint made a mental note to try to explain it to the guy after dinner.

They managed to eat without destroying the table, which was actually a first. Clint was going to have to ask Phil to give Thor a gold star. It'd be funny to watch the explosion when Thor worked out it was a tactic used on children.

****

Tony spent the next week with the help of JARVIS and Phil getting Bruce and Steve to nearly adhere to a half-way reasonable schedule. Steve didn't seem too happy with it all. Since he was standing in Tony's workshop yelling.

Steve wound down and quit flailing his arms. Dum-E rolled closer with one of the green shakes he liked to make. Steve stared at him.

"Take the glass so he'll be happy, Steve."

Steve blinked, took the glass, and stared down at it as Dum-E happily rolled away. "What?"

Tony took the glass and set it aside. "Just, explain to me why you have to try to kill yourself and we'll leave you to that stupid gym of yours if it is really that important."

Steve took a breath and sat down next to Tony on one of the rolling stools. "I don't know my limits."

Tony cocked his head. "You, what?"

"My body's limits. I'm still mapping them out."

"Oh." Tony rubbed his nose. "So, what, you don't eat to see how long you can go before you drop?"

Steve shrugged. "Same with the punching bag. I've run to see my limit on that too." He looked around Tony's workshop. "I'm still fine tuning. Finding the sweet points so I know..." He looked down at his hands. "I need to know my break points."

"Fuck, Cap, that's..." Tony stopped and nodded. "Okay, yeah, I can see how you'd need it to be all you and not some report I can give you based on models and simulations. Still..." He looked at the set of Steve's jaw. "You promise to come out of that gym when JARVIS says and I'll look into getting three weeks cleared for survival training and we'll go somewhere and train. The whole team."

"There's no possible way you'll get three weeks clear for everyone."

Tony smiled. "That's something I can get done. Promise me about JARVIS."

Steve gave him a sharp nod. "Fine. I promise."

****

Tony sicced Clint on Bruce because he was much better at not getting caught up in Bruce's excitement over whatever he'd figured out this time than Tony was. Clint sat and watched Bruce drip things into other things and wait five minutes to drip in more things.

Clint didn't interrupt until the screen next to him lit up with a small message saying that nothing would go to ruin in the next hour. "Bruce."

"Just a minute. I'm not finished."

"Bruce, you are never finished."

Bruce looked up at that. "I..." He frowned down at the tubes in front of him. "I could..." He looked around the lab and seemed to come awake. "I could find a cure here."

Clint knew not to argue with that one. "You might." He gently tugged on Bruce's arm. "Right now you could eat."

Bruce frowned and blinked. "I...There's so much to do." He waved his free arm at the test tubes.

"It will be here when you come back." Clint patted Bruce's shoulder. "If it isn't for some reason then Tony will get you more test tubes."

Bruce swallowed. "He would?" He nodded. "He would."

"Yep." Clint tugged a little harder. "Come on, Doc. Let's go eat."

Clint watched Bruce's reflection in the glass wall as Bruce stared at the lab until they turned the far corner in the corridor.

****

Clint tucked his feet under Nat's thigh. "I don't know what to do with him."

She sighed as Thor's character on screen fell off another cliff. "Thor, the cliffs will kill you."

Thor smiled at her and his character shoved Nat's character off the cliff. "I have seen this."

Nat made that sigh she used just before bodily harm became the only option. Clint blocked Thor's character from shoving Nat's off the next cliff.

"I just...I don't even know, Nat. He's weird about that lab."

Nat looked to Phil, who was busy making his character actually solve the puzzle while the rest of them fell off cliffs. "What do you think?"

Phil shrugged. "He was denied access to any formal lab for years. I think binging on newly gained access is a given."

Clint frowned. "He's not slowing down, though."

Nat huffed as her character was picked up and placed on a lever switch by Phil's character. "Steve is actually worse, I think."

Phil nodded. "Stark bribed him into compliance by promising to find a three week hole for training."

Thor looked away from the screen. "Does the Captain not train now? Is that not the concern?"

Clint snickered as Nat pushed Thor's character off the side of the dock their characters were on. "Yeah, Thor. He's training, but to the point of no use. Not just to be fit."

Thor thought about that as he shoved Clint' character ahead of him into a trap to clear it. "Would it not be better to simply explain his habits are worrisome?"

With a snort, Clint patted Thor's shoulder with his controller. "Yeah, sure. Give that a try and let me know how fast he throws his shield at you."

Thor rubbed the side of his head. "He has done that once in the past." Thor turned back to the game. "Perhaps it is something of the culture of his original time?"

"I wish that was all it was." Phil got the puzzle done and they moved on to the next section of the level.

****

Thor looked down at the calendar Ms. Potts was holding out to him. "I do not have a formal schedule here."

"I know that." She smiled at him. "I'm asking that you try to be free for these three weeks. No going to Asgard, or any formal things. Alright?"

He looked at it again. "You were appointed by Tony to insure the three weeks promised to the good Captain?"

"That's correct, Prince Odinson."

He nodded. "Please, simply call me by my given name." He touched the calendar. "From this Thor's day to this one?"

Her eyebrows went up. "Well, okay, sure. We'll go with that." She patted his arm. "Thank you, Thor. Please be ready to leave on a moment's notice. Just in case."

He nodded and went to pry Doctor Banner from his lab. Son of Coul had said it was his turn to do so.

****

Pepper sighed when she finally got everyone rearranged and lined up in the three week time period. "Now, if we can just not have an alien invasion." She glanced around. "Oh, that better not have jinxed anything."

She put on her heels that clicked solidly and headed to Tony's workshop. The man was busy, as usual, doing something with a...She averted her eyes. She hated when she caught him working on his sex toys. "Is this the worse thing I've caught you doing, Mr. Stark?"

He grinned and flicked a towel over the machine. "Oh, I don't think so." She wondered when he'd started displaying that sort of consideration. She could remember a time when he'd have flaunted whatever new function he was putting in. "Ms. Potts. Have we got a date for the team?"

She smiled as she pulled up the calendar. "Three weeks all cleared."

He beamed at her and kissed her on the temple. "Thank you. You have no idea how awesome you are."

Pepper blinked and watched him wonder across the workshop to get whatever he needed for the next project she didn't want to think about. "Wow." She shook her head, and turned to leave. "Will that be all, Mr. Stark?"

He smiled wide at her. "That'll be all, Ms. Potts." He picked up a torch. "Unless you want to tell Bruce he's going to a whatever, that thing that's tomorrow night, with me?"

She made her best oh-so-not-paying-me-enough face. "I don't think so, Tony."

He laughed and waved her towards the door. "Figures. Make me do all the hard work. Go, go. That'll be all, Ms. Potts."

She nodded as she bit her lips to keep from laughing out loud and went.

****


End file.
